We explore “10 things” that range from the menu of materials available to engineers in their profession to the many mechanical and electrical properties of materials important to their use in various engineering fields. We also discuss the principles behind the manufacturing of those materials.
By the end of the course, you will be able to:
* Recognize the important aspects of the materials used in modern engineering applications,
* Explain the underlying principle of materials science: “structure leads to properties,”
* Identify the role of thermally activated processes in many of these important “things” – as illustrated by the Arrhenius relationship.
* Relate each of these topics to issues that have arisen (or potentially could arise) in your life and work.
If you would like to explore the topic in more depth you may purchase Dr. Shackelford's Textbook:
J.F. Shackelford, Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers, Eighth Edition, Pearson Prentice-Hall, Upper
Saddle River, NJ, 2015

Welcome to week 1! In lesson one, you will learn to recognize the six categories of engineering materials through examples from everyday life, and we’ll discuss how the structure of those materials leads to their properties. Lesson two explores how point defects explain solid state diffusion. We will illustrate crystallography – the atomic-scale arrangement of atoms that we can see with the electron microscope. We will also describe the Arrhenius Relationship, and apply it to the number of vacancies in a crystal. We’ll finish by discussing how point defects facilitate solid state diffusion, and applying the Arrhenius Relationship to solid state diffusion.